Tuesday, April 3, 2012

This article was first posted on August
30, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

I have mixed feelings about Alien: TheDirector's Cut. On one hand, the insertion of never before seen
footage provides us with a perspective on the life cycle of the Alien
different from the Alien as social insect analogue used in Aliens.
On the other hand, the insertion of the footage interferes with the
taut pacing of the original, especially when one considers when
in the sequence of events leading up to the film's climax Ripley
discovers the Alien's nest in the Nostromo; the atmosphere is one of
urgency after Ripley finds Parker's and Lambert's mutilated bodies
and subsequently initiates the Nostromo's self-destruct sequence and
it is during her almost frenzied rush to the Nostromo's
lifeboat/shuttle that she discovers the nest and spends valuable
minutes that she can ill afford to lose (given the self-destruct
mechanism's ten minute timer) exploring the nest and euthanizing, for
lack of a better word, Dallas and Brett, who she finds cocooned and
slowly metamorphosing into Alien eggs. Had she found the nest prior
to initiating the Nostromo's self-destruct sequence, the inclusion of
this scene may have worked. In its present place, it detracts from
the urgency of Ripley's plight.

Be that as it may, details of the Alien
life cycle presented in this scene give us a tantalizing glimpse of
what may have been had this footage not been excised in the original
theatrical release. The first sequel, Aliens, would have certainly
been different, since there wouldn't have been an Alien queen to act
as Ripley's foil. Speaking of Aliens, the more I've watched Alien
(either the original theatrical release or the director's cut), the
more dissatisfied I've grown with its sequel. My primary gripe is on
differences in the way the Alien was portrayed in the two films; in
the first film, the Alien is an ambush predator that establishes a
perch from which it slowly and stealthily approaches its victims
before seizing them and dragging them to its lair where they can be
cocooned; in the second film, the ambush predator is no more and we
are treated to the Alien as a target amongst many in a shooting
gallery, which, to be fair, is probably consistent with the vision of
the Alien as social insect presented in the film.

Frankly, I prefer the vision of the
Alien presented in the original film. To quote the android, Ash:
[The Alien is a] perfect organism. Its structural perfection is
matched only by its hostility. [It is] a survivor... unclouded by
conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

I could have forgiven the
inconsistencies in Mal's characterization in the movie as opposed to
the series (after all, a bit of time was supposed to have passed and
people do change) but I really found the resolution of River's story
arc to be really difficult to stomach. I may be in the minority here
but I find the concept of omnipotent and omniscient heroes to be,
well, boring. During the series, while it was obvious that River had
some unique and powerful abilities, the fact that she was off in
la-la land half the time prevented her from being too obtrusive.
Once she was "cured" of her psychological ailments, she
became...boring. And obtrusive. And speaking of how she was
"cured", it was simply too neat and tidy: River sees a
holographic recording of Ms. Exposition describe how an entire
planetful of people just decided to lay down and die, how the Reavers
came to be and after witnessing the bloody climax of the recording
(Ms. Exposition getting raped and eaten alive by a Reaver), River
purges her demons by vomiting against a nearby wall after which she
declares: "I'm alright...I'm alright". Huh? What? This
was most unsatisfying considering everything that she and Simon went
through during the course of Firefly's fourteen episodes.

Yeah, we get it. She's
cured. And a total badass now

Personally, I think the movie would
have been much more satisfying had River died; if she had simply
closed the blast doors, tossed Simon's medical kit through the doors
before they closed and then gotten killed by the Reavers, the movie
would have been much better. We would have been spared the rather
difficult to swallow scenes of her wading through the Reavers and
piling their corpses up like cordwood and River sacrificing herself
to save her brother and the others would have been very poignant, on
par with Spock sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise and her
crew in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Her dying to save her
brother would also have lent thematic symmetry to their story arc.
And more important of all, we would have been spared the exchange
between River and Mal at the film's end where we realize that she can
essentially do everything that everyone on the crew can (and probably
do a better job of it) which leaves us with the question of what
purpose they serve now.

Spock saves the
Enterprise and its crew in a selfless act of heroism

Of course, having River die in Serenity
probably would not have sat well with many
Firefly fans, especially since almost a third of the original cast
ended up getting killed off in the film. River dying probably would
have resulted in grief-stricken Firefly fans converging upon JossWhedon's home with torches and pitchforks in hand and bloody
vengeance in their hearts. However, I find nothing wrong with the
idea of the hero dying in a story. I thought the Star Trek moviefranchise would have been much better had Spock stayed dead in the
aftermath of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (if anything, it could
have opened up some interesting story-lines about how Kirk and the
rest of the crew dealt with their grief and eventually got on with
their lives) and I thought Lethal Weapon 2 would have been a much
better movie had Riggs died in Murtaugh's arms. There's nothing
wrong with the hero dying, either in the act of saving the lives of
others or avenging a loved one.